Friday, December 2, 2016

Progress MS-04 Fails to Reach Orbit after Soyuz Rocket Failure

WASHINGTON
— A Progress cargo spacecraft bound for the International Space Station failed
to reach orbit after launch Dec. 1, a failure that should not have an immediate
impact on operations of the station and its crew.

The Soyuz-U
rocket carrying the Progress MS-04 spacecraft lifted off on schedule at 9:51
a.m. Eastern from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

The initial phases of
the launch appeared to go well, but there was later confusion about whether the
spacecraft has reached orbit and deployed its navigation antennas and solar
arrays.

According
to a statement issued by the Russian state space corporation Roscosmos,
telemetry from the rocket ended 6 minutes and 22 seconds after liftoff, partway
through the engine burn of the Soyuz’s third stage. Roscosmos said the
spacecraft crashed in a “remote and unpopulated mountainous area” of the
Republic of Tuva, a region of Russia in southern Siberia on the border with
Mongolia.

The
spacecraft was carrying about 2.5 tons of cargo for the station, including
equipment, food, water and propellant. Had the spacecraft launched
successfully, it would have docked with the station Dec. 3 and remained there for
several months.

The
supplies, intended primarily for the three Russian cosmonauts on the station,
were not critical. NASA said after the failure that there were large stockpiles
of key supplies on the station.

In a Nov.
14 presentation to a NASA Advisory Council human exploration and operations
committee meeting, Sam Scimemi, ISS director at NASA Headquarters, said
reserves of most supplies would last on the station well into 2017 even without
the Progress mission. “We’re doing really well on consumables,” he said then.
“We’ve learned a lot over the years on how to manage our consumables.”

A chart
Scimemi showed at the meeting indicated that, without the Progress mission, the
limiting supply was water, but even there supplies would did not dip into a
reserve until March.

Additional
supply missions are planned for the station in the next several months. A
Japanese H-2 Transfer Vehicle (HTV) cargo spacecraft was scheduled for launch
on Dec. 9 on an H-2 rocket prior to the Progress accident. That HTV launch,
according those familiar with station planning, could be delayed a few days to
add any critical cargo items lost in the Progress failure.

Orbital
ATK plans to launch its next Cygnus cargo mission on a United Launch Alliance
Atlas 5 in early 2017, most likely in March. SpaceX may also resume Dragon
cargo missions to the ISS in early 2017, depending on its launch schedule and
its success in resuming Falcon 9 launches after a Sept. 1 pad explosion. The
Falcon 9 return-to-flight mission, carrying 10 Iridium Next satellites, is
scheduled for Dec. 16 from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

The
station’s six-person crew was notified of the failure later in the day, and
appeared to take the loss in stride. “We are fine up here and will function
fine until the next supply spacecraft arrives,” Thomas Pesquet, a European
Space Agency astronaut on the station, tweeted several hours after the failed
launch.

The launch
failure is the second loss of a Progress cargo spacecraft in just over a year
and a half. The Progress M-27M spacecraft spun out of control after separation
from its upper stage on an April 2015 launch and reentered in early May. A
Russian investigation blamed a “design peculiarity” between the spacecraft and
the upper stage of the new Soyuz-2 rocket for the mission failure.

A Russian
Soyuz-U rocket has ended in failure during the third stage burn and the
Progress MS-04 spacecraft with 2,450 kg of cargo onboard due to head for the
International Space Station has been lost. Liftoff took place at 14:51 UTC,
December 1st 2016 from the Baikonur cosmodrome.

AWAKENING FOR ALL!!!

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